Flying Colors

After a fine Handel recital CD, not to mention taking part in a dozen other major recordings, countertenor David Daniels has hit the jackpot. This fascinating, handsomely recorded CD offers us arias from Mitridate and Ascanio in Alba, and a concert aria by Mozart (the only one he composed for male alto), as well as some Handel and Gluck arias. With them, Daniels takes us through every quality a classically trained singer should have and comes through with flying colors. The arias are about vengeance, sorrow, love–the usual–but within baroque strictures that means that some require lush, limpid singing, others ferocious coloratura and exclamatory heft, and some all of these.

Formed in Przemyśl (Poland) in 2009, Arlon is a Polish progressive rock band. In 2013, the group featuring Jacek Szott (saxophone, keyboard and composition), Wiesław Rutka (guitar), Maciej Napieraj (bass), Paweł Zwirn (drums) and vocalist Paweł Szykuła, releases their first studio album ,,On The Edge”. The album receives very good reviews and in March 2014 wins the prestigious First Prize of “The Werbel 2013” (a competition for the best album of the year 2013 ) awarded by the Polish Radio Rzeszow. The year 2013 is for the band the time of promoting the album “On the Edge”. The band gives concerts in many places all over Poland, including Warsaw, Cracow, Katowice, Lublin, Rzeszów and Przemyśl. At that time the band performs at a prestigious Polish festival, the 7th Festival of Progressive Rock in Gniewkowo, and participates in the first historical concert of Rock Area On Stage in Katowice. The latter, with a guest performance of Clive Nolan ( Arena, Pendragon ), takes place on 21 November 2013.

Really, this is probably Chicago's most underrated and overlooked of their early albums, but full of great material, and certainly one of their finest…

"Dominion" is the second album of Kamelot and the last with Mark Vanderbilt on vocals and Richard Warner on drums. The band uses the same music approach as in the first album, "Eternity". The album is not more mature than "Eternity", it could be titled as a sibling to that album. Probably most of the tracks of the two albums were composed at the same period of time…

Eternity is the first album of the Power Metal band Kamelot. It's also the first of the two the band recorded with Mark Vanderbilt doing the vocals…

Adhering more to a classic Euro-metal style than many of their peers, Kamelot's Siege Perilous nevertheless captures the mournful, epic feel of much '90s Scandinavian metal. ~ Steve Huey